gifmetadata
CLI tool for extracting GIF metadata
Overview
GIFs contain 'comments' that were commonly used to attribute copyright and attribution in the early days of the web. Since then programs have lost the ability to read and write this data. gifmetadata can read and output this data.
Output
gifmetadata can read comments, application extensions and plain text embedded within a GIF. The GIF file format holds this information in "blocks".
Blocks
| Block Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Comment | Text messages limited to 256 characters, primarily copyright and attribution messages. |
| Application extension | Custom extensions to GIFs that applications may use to add additional features to the GIF. For example Netscape 2.0 used them to add early animation looping. Application extensions contain a name and then 'sub-blocks' of binary data, this may ping your terminal. |
| Plain text | A feature within the 89a specification to display plain text on-top of images that was never utilized. |
CLI
USAGE: gifmetadata [options] file
OPTIONS:
-h / --help Display help, options and program info
-a / --all Display all GIF metadata blocks instead of only the comment
-v / --verbose Display more data about the gif, e.g. width/height
-d / --dev Display inner program workings intended for developers